Shrapnel no.4

Of course I loved you
As we all did
As everybody does
But if

When I was young
I knew what it was to be human
The difficulties
What we can give and all our common flaws

If I'd known these things
And seen you, as you were then
I would have loved you even more.

Painting

I cannot paint like Turner
Nor Van Gogh
Not with any brush,

Not by any measure.

But the process of this failure
Is always a great pleasure.

The last to know

If you were the last to know
Everybody you speak to knows

Too obvious, show don't tell

When over the wall exploring
Like scent precedes the flower
Like light precedes a break in rain
Long before you even saw.

And all that seep through the whorehouse
Full of song, some would settle opposite
As Istanbul.
But other myths.

In Istanbul

My love first saw snowfall

Pulled confusion close in daylight
After arguing, I could have cried
My way through the labyrinth till death.

Are you really the last to know?

Sometimes I find modern poetry has poor technical structure and goes on in purple about idealised intimacy

Modern Poetry
They share so much online now
A little verbose.

More point in refugees

What point Oligarchs and bankers
Who ride upon the backs of millions?
Send not these high men who surf the mass

Send those who are cobblestones
Beneath, those ground under hooves

That would make most of us dust.

These foundations, flint hard intrepids who leapt fences

Swum sharks, send ingenious escapologists

From minefield homes who have left
So as not to take up the gun. Send these
Pressure tested, un crushed carbon based lives
Not fat, soft feathered opulents
Buying golden visas for a seven-figure fee
No, I see more point in refugees.

What discord followed

Did I not tell you
As family and friend
Never to deny your love for me
And yet you did.
What discord followed.

You grasped the rose
The wrong part
Too tight and fought
The air about your nose.
A sorry show.

Did I not tell you
As a guru and a guide
Never to deny your love for me
And yet you did
What death of joy.

What ashen wrangle
Smashed china sorrow
There is no reweaving of ripped cloth
A stitch, a patch, a scar, a loss.

He told you
In jealousy and fear
To deny your love for me
And for him, you were not brave
From such instances our lives are made.

The Oracle at Brixton

“All change please”
Prescription clear as scripture

The robot implores
Doors still closed

You could not state a truer picture of our times

And this dilemma

“For your own safety
Please stand back from the yellow line”

Hear, these are those unsafe times
We must all change
And to change
Must cross the yellow line.

By Etonians, for Etonians

You can't say he didn't tell you

They're in it together.
Tailcoat banquets
Sanctioned dole cheques

They gave your tax breaks
To a fat cat in Sark.
Dark. I think of Lincoln
Don't buy it again
A government of Etonians
By Etonians, for Etonians.
They're in it together my friend.

DNA Rights!

The birds, the bees

The educated fleas
They all have love

Have fear and pain.

The flowers, trees

Even cultivated peas
Care for their children

Can flourish and gain.

Is it fear of our similarity
More valuable for singularity
More comforting in unkind disparity
All life deserves respect not charity.

Fight for life, by day and by night
For all upon earth, call DNA rights!

Google it

Look we can Google it
The tools are all in place

Just give MPs a Google account

And we can track their every pace

See their smiling face

Hear what songs they sing

And what company they grace.

Offer helpful suggestions

Prick their conscience

Pique their interest

Get prompt answers to those questions.

All for about £1300
We seem slow to understand

We have tools to control democracy

From the palms of our hands.

Sack em all put whitehall on a Wiki

You might say vote this one
Vote for that one because of that
But in truth, I'm not that picky
Sack em all, put Whitehall on a wiki.

Amateurs from out of town

Sent to London to watch the crown

Was a great idea in 1200 AD

But obviously

With the web we can sack em all
And put Whitehall on a wiki.

Some of them corrupt, lazy

Incompetent and such
Some of them be tax evaders
Eating the “double Irish- Dutch”

The solution is not tricky

We can sack em all

And put Whitehall on a wiki.

You want policy done by people who know what they're doing

MPs know about a lying and bring the country to ruin.
Before the situation gets any more sticky

We have to sack them all, put Whitehall on a wiki.

They will not sell the NHS

They will not sell the NHS

Trust me, I know best.

They'll sell the land beneath its feet

And cut the staff like fields of wheat.

You'll get every drug from N.I.C.E

Without a blink, at twice the price.

They'll bury it in a mound of debt

And all the while let's not forget

When you watch another hearse

It will all be paid from the public purse.

The free press

They fought and fled
In shackles died

To have books read

And town hear cry.

To make print free

Words cut and dry

So all decide

With their own eyes.

They fought and fled

In shackles died

And yet it seems

Under Sun and Sky

The free press now

Costs much to buy.

Voter

You say you love the country
Sing god save the queen
Recite the school taught history
Keep Great Britain clean.

Don't claim to be a patriot
You're an idiot.
Puppet for the global loaded

Fodder for propaganda bots.

Sons of empire

Will you get a price for her down river
Will they ever

Listen to you again.

Friend you're not a patriot

You're a short sighted

Destructive idiot.

Deceased in Smog

All's well that ends well
Sometimes the wise course is
A trouble to tell
But on counterfactual, conjecture
We should not dwell
Like @Jacob_Rees_Mogg choking
On the 19th floor
Of Grenfell's smoked filled stairwell.

Dead letters

Wick ghost, most cherished

I sketch pissed emphemera in pencil

Soot tress this spring all the more

For the less of you

When callous

I laugh at your choice

Ignorant of the act, ill observant

Yet you know

I would be harder, demand you grow

Than all the giddy drunks you make

The muse like seasons

Persistent           I celebrate you wanting

More              in your unkowing

Wish you every blessing.

It is with some hurt, my jet

I laugh at your choice

But I do.

So do you.

Shrapnel No.56

Because I was effortless
In the giving of these gifts
You took it all for granted
Didn't think they would be missed.
Good friends we had
Good friends we lost
Along the way.
I hope we meet again some day.

Best player ever

Ballon D'Or,

Phwoah, do a step over
Dribble some more.
The world's best player
For those who are savvy
Was once called Xavi – Iniesta – Xavi.

Most footballers count one-two
Wall pass, fly through
But great players make triangles
We all know they do.
How do make one with two, not three

Ask that player Xavi- Iniesta – Xavi.

Some players read the game
But a few write the book
Know the next chapter
From only a look
But there's a novelist, with multiple triologies
That player known as Xavi-Iniesta-Xavi

Duels won zero, successful dribbles, zero

You'd think his man-marker was some kind of hero
The truth is the poor lad never got close
Spent ninety-minutes just chasing a ghost
With passes so sensitive they're type you could marry
Off the boots of that player
Xavi-Iniesta-Xavi.

First world problems

The rich have private jets and yachts and yet the shops
Have no cocoa
These boutiques of Brezhnev where you cannot even queue.

I got first world problems
I got first world problems
Like they dissolved jobs into chips and bits
Extract my characteristics
To bamboozle me and sell me shit.

I got first world problems
Like the 20th century infrastructure miracle distilling
Sixty cents in the dollar
Piped, alembic like, into the infinitely capacitous pockets
Of Jeff Bezos, that leaves the rest of us.....

I got first world problems
Like they only make magic money to rearrange property rights
Privatise my collective services
To incompetent fly-by-nights.

I got first world problems
Like they covered the land in tarmac
So you can't grow food
But you can drive to buy it back.

I got first world problems
Like my mind is under attack
By nefarious cabals
That develop their social agenda on crack.

I got first world problems
Like social organisation is complex beyond my comprehension
N-dimensional factorials. An utter dependence on expert systems
Like trains, traffic lights international logistics, wires and gas pipes.

I got first world problems
Like government beyond amateur comprehension
And I've got amateur representation
They said I was above it
But then they closed my station.
(What would you do?)

I got first world, timeless problems
Like barbarians inside the gates
Power high coke fiends that pillage and rape.

It's loco
I got first world problems
I bought the shop out of tropical products like cocoa.

Lost phone

It was shiny and new
Boo hoo Boo hoo
And its camera shot true
Boo hoo Boo hoo
I lost my phone down the Tube
Boo hoo Boo hoo.
It did so many things
I don't need to do.
Boo hoo Boo hoo

I said its dead.

99.9998% of people on the planet
Fight over 7% of the world's wealth

That's 7% for your food, family, education and health
1300 people own everything else.

Is it broken?

Say you're woke but have you woken?

Bleat capitalism, sheep track, goose chase, dog bark wrong tree
Can't see, the wood, forgive him
They make money of you breathing and living

Life's cheap
Turkeys ain't got franchise

If you're woke then blink
If you can't see what's in front of your eyes
Then you'll only ever know what they told you to think.

From each according to their ability
To each according to their need

Sounds like Linux, Sourceforge, YouTube tutorials to me

With 7% for us.
Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos the surplus.

Citizens of nowhere

Citizens of nowhere
Dog whistle, it's Daoist
The yin and yang
Each word its opposite manifests.

Citizens of our Empire.
Citizens of nowhere
Dog whistle the map dots
Spots like Rockall
Sandbars, cocktail bars, Anguila
Citizens of nowhere.

Mother of that vision
Citizens of nowhere
With zeal and greed
Private planes for old men, old women
Handcuffed.
She stole a nurse's passport
And made her die overseas.
Citizens of nowhere.

Leaves like ears and tongues

I have been waiting for the Sage to flower

This village of grey green furred leaves like ears

In spring rooves spread curved about the compost

Now build cathedrals, articulates spires

Skyward, like furred radio towers.

I have been waiting for the Sage to flower.

How it has grown, grey-green furred leaves like tongues

That wag in wind, pregnant with utterance.

Rising like a snap of timelapsed helicopters

They stretch their soft cupped tips slowly upwards.

My mother says it is good husbandry

To snip back stem to base before it seeds

Or that lush Sage company grows chaos.

Sparse mess of wooden lines, withered ears

A mass of snakes at death. The roots expire.

I have been waiting for the Sage to flower

This tall copse of rushes, soft leaves like ears

Still in the morn, a landing patch for flies

Around the black bin a grey forest throngs

Steadily rising furred leaves like tongues.

Faeries make their home there, in purple cups

A bit like bluebells, with a summer outlook

A feast for bees now the rocket has passed

All the Daisies and Borrage, Thyme flowers.
Since retired my mother's Thyme is pruned

To perfectly round bowers, pres d'Agen.

I have been waiting for the Sage to flower
Its towers engulf the old compost bin
Slender grey green palms now stand two foot tall

Their bobbled leaves loll slow like thirsty tongues
Hanging silent in the July sun.

Thick trunked trees well mulched, strawberry patches
A thatch of dry grass, Ivy and Yew
And the faeries will stop, when they pass through
Sprites and pixies too will come
For the purple flower with veined leaves like tongues.

I have been waiting for the Sage to flower

From rising tongues it has built its empire

Elaborates joints like candelarbra
The old black compost bin in forest lost
A cloud of veined grey-green tongues that thrust.

I thought, clear in error, some dyslexic
Misfiled season that Sage when it strung
Its palisade in spring would purple bring
And faeries soon but many moons have sank
And still, my mother would have said the other
A, not April, how fell, my foolish mind
Does serve me ill.

At some august time, correct and proper
After purple sentinels have trumpeted their nectar
The grey-green tongues have fed the zenithed bells
When flies have drank and bees, the faeries swum
In purple cups and pixies played harp
Upon the petals; I will take scissors
Cut stalk to base afresh, tight bunch the stems
With Honeysuckle twine and hold bright flame
Carrying all about house and garden
As witches would have done
A censer make of silent grey green tongues.

For good faeries will come rushing to aid
And bad faeries will turn tail and run
When they smell the scent of a home burning
The purple cups and their soft ears aflame
Fig hollow, foxglove will house those that came.

And set ground afresh for spirits next year
I have been waiting for the Sage to flower.

Shrapnel 102

I put a pin into a fountain and it failed
What is one to do when there's no donkey for the tail?
What is one to do when you've an aeroplane to mail?
I put a pin into a fountain and it failed.

Shrapnel 31

The was I time I ran
Broken mooreland and glen

And clouds gathered like a temper

The clouds were not looking for me
I did not dance for them to come

Yet it rained

The gathering weight of water drops
Washing salt, sweet over my lips
I drank every breath.

Therapy Notes III

I don't care

The frayed child's lie
You should not argue with those not there.
The washing machine will not clean
The churning of these waking dreams.

Pouring dirt in the powder slot
Push the button, pressing play
Turn the dial to boiling hot.
A grey matter, you cannot run away. 

Nor waste in anguish yet more days
For all the fearful love you share
You should not argue with those not there.

Wasted

I.

The cranes are pecking at the mudflats
Scarred ground and glass

Unresting spirits, in torment, the ghosts
Of terraces down west and east are lost
At night, great red eyed rats sit atop

The office blocks
Great red eyed rats, fat

They have evicted even ghosts
And busy making new ones from the young.

II.

Cup aloft in flowing throng, young, tall and blonde he loudly calls “Can anybody help me”

Falters his voice through heaving halls, "Can anybody help me. I'm homeless" receding backs "Can anybody, anybody. Help. A hurry, hurry of hair and cloth stickles past the paper cup; stick to the path in forest, for many are lost; to the escalators “Get out, Get out” The bluecoats shout at she, traffic powdered pallid hurt, knees up, sunweathered spots and anger. Shouted "Get out" as the portly lady just put a KFC bucket at her feet. "Get out" when she got a mega bucket at her feet. She standing now clenched and shouting, silent; not her parents, the numbers, she, we, we've all seen the numbers, all of us, the figures; kid's gait, small storm, zephyr in an alleyway till the grey, bitten hand carved of frostbite says.

“Go get your food”.

III

“Les enfants danse sur la cupole" seulement
Without religion

They offer opiates and racism

Like the bones are no longer in our mouths

Like we miss a season when dead flowers bud.

The children are crying in the tunnels again.
Git, git, git

Glug, glug, glug.

Shrapnel No.88

The rarefied, most alive
There's no need to deify
It's the way I see it in true
And I justify it too
Tell it straight up
I'm gonna subjectify you.

They must have told ya
It's in the eye of the beholder.
At your shoulder, cold how call girls
Can't hold a candle to you
So I hold a brush to canvas
There's no rush, and there's no
Kansas
It's yellowbricks and only us.

No need to mystify my intention for you
You can see it in my eye,
I'm gonna subjectify you.

Faraday might've kicked his cat

This knowledge did not come from God
This but single tapestry stitch

Made by flawed hands that broke edicts

This knowledge was made by humans.

The system made human minds

Inhuman. Without need for God

For grace or piety.

This knowledge is stained with slavery

Torture, war and sin.

There is no stitch in this rich picture
That bares a thread untouched by blood

This knowledge did not come from God.

Ode to the shit they utter

In an emergency
The blue lights flash, sirens and engines
Expensively assembled teams years in training
Rush to the scene.
Pour on as much water, see no expense spared
Get a helicopter up, the cost is who cares?

In an emergency
You put everything to one side
It's not time to do dishes or watch the paint dry
It's not business as usual, take it all in your stride
With that emergency response
You find people died.

Swifts

If they gave swifts a sky trail

That is how i'd like to write
Or hand washing on river rocks
That is how.

And if I've been unfair

To you, to me, to pages

It is in naming this infatuation.

When to give its due

The muse is one type of love

It's true.

And if I've been unfair to love

It is to say

This is not the type

One needs. One needs

A weave of loves like sail rope

A chord, made from chords

Made from threads.

This ink is just one thread

And I would write like swifts instead.

Santa-Claus doesn't wear a crown

There's always been relations
By folk across nations

Scientists and artists
In horse and carts didn't start this.
Erasmus' letters were not the first
Jean-Claude Juncker, far from the worst.

Just as artists will make art
Scientists shine light

Troubadors come with music and fun
Powerful people muster swords and guns
And relate through fights.

But it's bedtime
Four seconds from midnight.

Kenwood at Christmas

Out from repeated fractal grey

The falling licks of yellow flame

Burn brown the fronds of earthen brains
And all the years whares
Laid in carpet on the floor.
The blue has gone and slowly
Yellow turns to brown and grey
Leaving lignen tributaries
Stretched in awe up to the rain.

This a time of furs and scoured grass
The rasping wind in lupine howl
It barely takes a gasp. They will fish carp

Carve turkey and the year's fat from goose
The flames are burning now

These named benches of no use.

In honour of Theresa May's deal

And where Cassandra?
Not since Troy tasked men

To pull the wooden horse

Within its gates

Has such statecraft taken place.
Auto-colonialism to rue and ponder
And facepalms for Cassandra.

Valentine

Let me at this time lie
Just for today.
Tell tall and wild tales
All the while a rose
Between my teeth
Today at least
Let me lie.

Forget didaction and analysis
The mirage oasis objectivity so illusory
In all illusion, lie wildly
And with passion, my rose
Between my teeth and talk
Of buttercups, pillows and home returns
Of roses, spring, covers and pillows
And beaches, peacocks and cake and stars
And cake and, pillows and clouds
And let it all seem true.

So just this one day you may know
How much I always love you.

The 12.51 to Preston

Sitting in a rickety

White conservatory in Leeds
Talking to an umbrella plant
About zen philosophy,

The twelve fifty one to Preston
Is this what the world expected.

The recovering man sits
On the phone to benefits
Poison fossilised in grey snakes
The mill's curse, scarring these hills,
Gap toothed half literate crack piping

Meat packer stamps his feet in threat

Stowed crow bar in the back pack

For opening doors, the politic

Is this what the world expected.

Make a bare room a seminar

Who's doing the throttling and how

The proper method of crop rotation

Palid, with a handsome visage

Rarely visited by smiles

One of his eyes wanders, the son

Oh him, with the racist Staf.

There are no songs

Of how the steam milled killed

This wet aired town.

Is this what the world expected.

After two shifts the soldier will return

From taking all of the five kids to Mosque

Ferry the recovering man for cash

Like basket weavers who borrow cane
Horror dawns over his jaw on the stair

Witness now to the impotence of serfs

Alone with the pots

Is this what the world expected.

Crack concrete to fit fresh pipe

Shift grit in sacks and back

For aggregates till the clock matches

All of that sweat
To cut the ageing radiators out
And create something better
Wait, for the fruit fly to drink
Gas off the fresh ink

Is this what the world expected.

Sitting in a rickety

White conservatory in Leeds

Talking to an umbrella plant

About zen philosophy

Is this what the world expected of me.

Things I didn't hear at the meeting

Things I didn't hear at the meeting

I tell you they're coming

They're coming they are

With bulldozers like tidal waves

Voracious steel jawed monsters

That crave to encase our community

In concrete, feast

And block out the sun.

Things I didn't hear at the meeting

I've been here for ten years.

Me twenty.

Me since sixty four.

I was here afore all yee in misty days of yore.

I was here when the shops were nice

Before people came to score.

I was here afore all yee in misty days of yore.

Things I didn't hear at the meeting

We intend to build a series of skyscrapers

That will blot out the sun,

Saddle the council with debt

Take the money and run.

Things I didn't hear at the meeting

The alternative to a festering turmite mound

That will devour the suffocated heart of our community,

An army of atomised worker cells

Shedding anonymity to lubricate the path

Of thieves and men of bad affections;

Is a collectively constructed

Constructively created, all purpose

Purpose built Shangrila.

Things I didn't hear at the meeting

I am diverse, I

Represent diverse people

We speak with one voice.

We are diverse here

And they want to build the same

On diverse people.

We diverse people

Need space to be

More diverse within

This community.

If we do not have space to be diverse

We cannot remain the same.

We hope that other

Diverse people will join us

And be diverse too.

Things I didn't hear at the meeting

Hello, I'd like to declare my interest

In a collection of ideas, ideals

That everyone thinks they'd like to believe

And feel quite good with tea and soft focus.

Hello, I'd like to declare that I'm drunk

And the chair of the club

That wouldn't rub shoulders

With you, the community.

Hello, I'd like to declare that I'm sent

From the infamous armies of Satan

We've got pictures and papers

On you and your offspring

And we're waiting,

To integrate input from you,

The community.

Things I didn't hear at the meeting

The picture you see before you

Has no sharp edges,

The colours represent

A very fashionable choice by Arturo

Who did the Auto CAD.

As you can see from the map

There are many spaces

That could be filled with a diverse range

Of hope and energy

Please all imagine

Something that you would like to see

Say “mmmmmm”

And forget the desperation on the doorstep.

Things I didn't hear at the meeting

Please disperse with military efficiency

Into groups of relevant proficiency and expertise.

Assemble your blueprints in two blinks on post its,

Please keep the yellow and green ones separate from pink.

Things I didn't hear at the meeting

Wouldn't it be nice to have some nice things.

Yes.

Other places have nice things, it could be nice.

Yes.

This is nicer than the other place I was.

Things I didn't hear at the meeting

I mean where they going to put it all ?

Where you going put all of them ?

If you put them there,

Where you going to put

All things you have to put

When you put things places?

Where they going to put it all?

It won't fit.

And who put em up to it?

Things I didn't hear at the meeting

I need something for what I do

People like me, they do too

We could do something for what I do

I like doing what I do.

Things I didn't hear at the meeting

You call this business,

Strung out hairdressers, beauticians and fried chicken

I'll buy a flat and you'll feel me pissing

From a great height.

I'm drunk and I don't give a...

Things I didn't hear at the meeting

Space is love

The love of this community

Concious of its beating heart

Seizing this transformational opportunity

To reaffirm tradition with a new start.

We can build something beautiful

With all the voices at the table

Open up the arena
For an eco-equitable, enabling eco-system

Of interactions symbiotically structured

To be systemically symmetrical celebrations

Of space as love.

Things I didn't hear at the meeting

Why don't we just chip in and buy them out.

Pass round the hat, get busy

Will have a few hundred mil in a couple of minutes.

If there's any left in the pot

We can give it to married, mortgaged middle-aged

White men because they don't seem to get a lot.

But we could build a tower block.

Yes, we could build a tower block

That's exactly what Tottenham needs

Another tower block.